Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

Like many lawyers I tend to call many other lawyers. It’s interesting the different sorts of methods used to answer the phone in lawyers’ offices from a wonderful, warm, and helpful receptionist to the straight-to-voicemail alternative. Actually, with all of the different option out there these days it’s probably worthy of a much more complete blog post in the future (hint, hint).

But for now, so I called another lawyer (I think) recently where a caller wouldn’t even know that he was calling a lawyer’s office. I thought it was a lawyer because this person had sent us some pleadings with a phone number listed on the bottom section of the pleadings. But the voicemail message was completely anonymous stating that you’ve reached such-and-such number and please leave a message, click.

If I was a potential client and needed a lawyer ASAP and that’s the message I heard on a voicemail I think I’d move on to the next option rather quickly.

Stumbled upon this resource from a tweet by the venerable Ed Poll. He’s got a bunch of great instructive videos up on YouTube that look like they’re worth exploring. He provides an easy-to-follow ‘to-do’ list.

We have a pending pleading asking that an opposing client be held in contempt of court for failure to follow a court’s order. At the first court date opposing client appears without a lawyer. I was able to speak with the client about the issue and he actually had some documentation showing that he likely was in compliance with the court’s orders and the issue just an inability of this guy and my client to communicate. Fine, the issue is likely off the table and we move on to the other areas of real disagreement. Always nice to get even a portion of the case settled, right?

Not!

I get a Motion to Quash Service regarding the contempt portion of the case from his new lawyer. I don’t want to talk specifically about the procedure because the pleading we got was also laughable in its wrongness. But overlooking that for a moment, if a client is actually in compliance with a court’s order and this chunk of the case is resolved by literally showing me one piece of paper, why ya filing anything?

And then there was the lawyer recently who wouldn’t even have a telephone conversation with me because she dislikes my client…

We’re all professionals here, we are professionals, we are professionals…what does that mean again?

Anyone else see this one a couple days back outside of Daley Center (the main state Courthouse in Chicago, IL) in Daley Plaza?

I must have walked out of the building at just after 11 a.m. and there was a female attorney with signage sort of like the above that said I think something like “Landlord Rent Collection Assistance” and she appeared to have a handful of pamphlets with what I was assuming was additional information about the services she offered which she was handing out to passersby. I had to run to catch a train but I should have grabbed a pamphlet and asked about a blog interview to see how it worked.

That’s not me but I think variations of the above could be very effective down there. There’s some pretty good foot traffic down there with the various festivals, farmers markets, ect.

A follow-up to my recent post, Stop that Job Hopping Once and For All…

Thanks for the great comments on the post above. No, solo practice isn’t for everybody that’s for sure. Hopefully most solos have a growth plan too. Julie Fleming made a great point about the paramount importance of marketing skills that far too many lawyers are lacking…maybe Julie can help you (click here).

And on a related front, a great guest post over at the Third Wave entitled How to launch your law career with some useful networking (social and in-person) tips thrown in.

What I’ve been reading of late…

Big firms cut back on law school recruiting. Yada, yada, yada.  Some examples from the article seemed to be 50%-60% cuts in summer associate positions and on-campus fall interviews. Well, you’re at the right place, Solo in Chicago.

Was it worth it? With debt of up to $250k, some law grads are dubious. Some? I don’t think it’s only a DEBT issue. This is my story which I bet is common. I decided to attend law school without giving that decision nearly enough thought…it was sort of an after-thought to generally boost my career prospects and to temporarily avoid permanent career decisions. I had no specific goal to work at a big firm or necessarily to work directly as a lawyer in private practice at all. Now I’m out and not particularly enamored with the “practice of law,” thinking of things to do that I would enjoy more, and I’m got this $40,000 weight around my neck.

Blogging Assistant PD Accused of Revealing Secrets of Little-Disguised Clients. Yeah, a little more anonymity and avoiding calling specific judges A-holes might best be avoided.

Darn, and I had some good coupons left in the 2009 Entertainment Book for Arlington Heights…

Saw this on the front page over at the Tribune, Police enter building searching for armed escapee. Sounds like the escapee was on his way to a court appearance in Rolling Meadows this morning before 10 am.  Not to make light of it but it sounds like a well-executed escape:

Rolling Meadows Deputy Police Chief David Scanlan told reporters that Maday was handcuffed in the car, but it was unclear how he subdued the investigators.

He took both officers’ weapons, forced one of them to strip and put on the officer’s pants and shoes, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

After abandoning the officers’ car, he then allegedly carjacked another car at gunpoint and drove to a parking of a Boston Blackie’s restaurant in Arlington Heights, 222 E. Algonquin Rd. A worker at the restaurant said police found the second car there and were searching in the area for the escapee.

The escape occurred near 1701 W. Golf Road in Rolling Meadows, authorities said. Simonton said she did not know how Maday overpowered the officers, who were not injured.

Sort of scary, that’s right in my main stomping grounds.

We have some pretty serious court security problems in Cook County, don’t we? (Note this guy was not actually in the courthouse as yet.) I can surely think of times where I haven’t felt safe when in court and dealing with incarcerated parties. I think 32 W. Randolph (Cook County’s parentage courthouse) is generally acknowledged as the worst. Any prisoners going to that courthouse go into the Daley Center through the underground garage at Daley, into the lock-up on one of the concourse floors at Daley, and then they’re literally walked across the street intersection at Dearborn and Randolph, into the main lobby and elevatored up to the 14th Floor.

And I actually think the problem is worse in the civil court system where they’re not set-up for dealing with prisoners. I’m doing a rare criminal case currently up in Waukegan and I have my one case down at 26th and California currently and those courthouses are essentially attached to jails so the prisoner more or less just takes an elevator up to the courtroom, walks into court and then walks out, down the elevator, and back to jail. The civil courthouses are not convenient to the jails so there’s a lot of transporting both to the courthouses and then walking down corridors in the courthouses which seems to be where the problems arise.

I got contacted by another young attorney recently seeking my advice regarding her obtaining employment (not the first such contact I’ve gotten). The story was a common one, essentially she’d been hopping from contract position to contract position over the last few years and currently she had recently become unemployed again. Is this your plight?

Wouldn’t hanging out your shingle on a full or part-time basis be a better long-term plan?

I will not sugar coat the start-your-own-firm process…it’s tough and not always the most lucrative endeavor. But even during this recessionary year the income has kept coming and I know I’ve got something that can be built upon in future months/years. The contract job to contract job to contract job to unemployment attorney has about zip.

And it’s right down from Daley Center at State & Washington. Here’s OfficePort’s site and some coverage recently in the Trib.

A place to work for the home office and self-employed crowd…Website says $400 per month but no extended leases get signed. I’d like to see a shorter than monthly option.

Nope, that’s not a description of hallucinogenic drugs. Actually, it’s a funny quote from this NYT’s blog post:  Lock the Law School Doors, it’s actually meant to describe the allure of the big money and prestige of Big Law.

As you might guess from the title, the artilcle is a warning of the less-than-great job prospects that face law school graduates currently and likely into the foreseeable future. Interesting that the U. of Miami’s law school dean wrote to members of this fall’s class with a similar warning and asking that students defer entrance into law school this fall.

Of course this isn’t a new story, this was the best analysis I’ve seen in recent years discussing the legal job market and here’s a piece from the last month, Downturn Dims Prospects Even at Top Law Schools. I think we’ve seen the recent highlights because as often happens during a recession, many with poor job prospects or laid-off workers head to law school and many schools have seen increased class sizes this fall.

My take, you can’t argue with the economic reality and the dwindling (temporarily or likely permanently) of the $150k+ gigs for BigLaw associates. Hopefully law schools will use this time of economic change to broaden their career services viewpoint (make the PIE bigger). During law school I felt that there was very much an institutional preference for large firm private practice both indirectly through the comments of faculty and more directly in terms of the on-campus interviews being almost exclusively large private practice law firms. Why not increase that pie significantly by getting government/business beyond private practice on-campus…from the FBI/CIA to nonprofit management to think tank type places. Also, as quoted in the orignal piece:

“Students may just have to make it in a more entrepreneurial fashion.”

Welcome!